FROM PREVIOUS PAGE ‘It’s one of the worst things I’ve come across as an MP’

was left telling her: ‘I asked you a question and you haven’t given me a straight answer, so I will draw my own conclusions.’ Towards the end of the session, Ian Henderson of Second Sight put on public record his concerns about the Post Office’s woeful investigation function. He was ‘very concerned’ about many of the prosecution cases brought by the Post Office against Subpostmasters.

Here was an independent investigator — brought in by the Post Office itself, remember — giving evidence to a parliamentary inquiry that a publicly owned company had brought criminal prosecutions without sufficient evidence, and that miscarriages of justice had very possibly occurred.

Paula Vennells simply denied it. ‘We have no evidence of that,’ she said.

But pressure on her was mounting. In an interview for Panorama, former Tory MP James Arbuthnot called on her to resign and said that the Post Office’s behaviour had been ‘disgusting’, an ‘abuse of power’ and ‘one of the most shocking things that I came across while I was a member of parliament’. The brother of a convicted Subpostmaster who had just died wrote to Ms Vennells telling her of his death and said that it had been due ‘in no small part to the seven years of stress he suffered as one of the Subpostmasters who have all been wronged terribly as a result of the Post Office negligence’.

Ms Vennells did not respond, leaving her ‘correspondence manager’ to send condolences on her behalf. Meanwhile, in 2018, she was awarded a CBe for her services to the Post Office.

Within weeks, Vennells had slipped further into the establishment’s warm embrace, announcing she would be leaving the Post Office to take up a board position at the Cabinet Office and chairmanship of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Neither job lasted long as questions about her time at the Post Office mounted.

But the reverend Vennells continued to preach on moral matters throughout the Church of england’s Bromham Benefice in Bedfordshire. She was ‘deeply saddened’ by the Subpostmasters’ accounts of their suffering that were reported during the Court of Appeal proceedings. The Communication Workers Union called for her to be stripped of her CBe and demanded a criminal investigation into those at the Post Office ‘who put these loyal postmasters in this situation’.

I wondered if Paula Vennells might now feel ready to give me an interview, in my seventh year of asking. Speaking through her lawyers, she refused, so I decided to visit her.

I drove to her house in the Bedfordshire countryside, a, rambling, old cottage, set in manicured grounds. It is the sort of house some of the sacked Subpostmasters had to clean to make ends meet.

I expected the place to be deserted, but I saw a room with lights on. It was a kitchen, and standing in it was Ms Vennells. We made eye contact. Delighted to see she was home, I jogged up to the front door and knocked, announcing who I was and why I wanted to speak to her.

NO reSPONSe. I knocked again, loudly. I walked back to the kitchen window. The lights had been switched off and the room was empty. Two untouched plates of what looked like pork chops and vegetables were steaming away in the semi-dark.

What was Vennells doing now? Hiding?

I went back to the front door and knocked again with my polite entreaties for an interview. Silence.

I tried once more time and then gave up. I had failed in my latest direct attempt to hold someone, anyone, to account.

In short, Horizon was a badly procured and atrociously implemented IT disaster. It was operated in an environment where a flawed system and incompetent people were able to destroy others’ lives.

But as for anyone being formally censured or punished for their role in causing, perpetuating or trying to cover-up the Great Post Office Scandal, well . . . I won’t hold my breath.

AdApted from the Great post Office Scandal, by Nick Wallis (£25, Bath publishing) © Nick Wallis 2021. to order for £22.50 (offer valid till 28/11/21; UK p&p free), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.